Top executives at once high-flying Impath Inc. crashed and burned yesterday for allegedly defrauding investors out of $260 million by cooking the books to “hit the numbers,” authorities announced yesterday.

Impath former chairman and CEO Anuradha Saad and former president Richard Adelson might join WorldCom’s Bernie “Hit the Numbers” Ebbers in the slammer for the security shenanigans, said Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley.

To add insult to injury, Saad, 48, of Los Angeles, failed to disclose in proxy statements that she was billing personal expenses to her corporate credit card – including $250,000 worth of art, furniture, jewelry, beauty products and vacation trips, according to the indictment.

Four other executives have already pleaded guilty to the scam and have agreed to become cooperating witnesses against Saad and Adelson, authorities said.

Saad and Adelson’s alleged fraud followed a similar pattern of other companies that went down the tubes. Over a three-year period, they and others inflated revenues by $64 million and cut true expenses in financial statements, the indictment said.

But by July of 2003, the jig was up. Impath announced that an internal probe admitted “possible accounting irregularities” – particularly overstatement of revenues. The stock price plummeted 88 percent – or a staggering $260 million. The firm went bankrupt.

The charges were the result of a joint probe that included the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission.